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SilentlyAmazing wrote:
I also bottled my Kolsch last night...
It was pretty painless. I was pissed, I ended up being 3 bottles short of 2 full cases of 12oz. bottles. It's pretty cool to have glass bottles instead of the PET bottles that came with Mr. Beer though.
Agreed. Capping is fun. I'm thinking of doing my next batch in growlers.
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I like the euro size bottles that still use standard crown caps. 25.6 fl oz i think. It looks like this: 
Stoudts abbey tripple is a great belgian style craft beer BTW.
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Time to bump this, bottling another batch tonight. If the last two batches are indicative of what it will be like, I think I need to move the Mr. Beer setup, it appears my current location may be allowing contamination. Also, for the local CO guys (pretty much just Mr. Sociable because they're not big yet), I went to a beer dinner last night with mexican food and the guys from Patteros Creek. Tried their pale and their porter, both were tasty. Available in 6 local bars and growing slowly. Not sure if they're bottling yet...
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If I find the time tonight, I want to move my Irish car bomb stout to secondary fermentation, and introduce the Jameson/vanilla mixture. I'm excited.
Chris, have you started anything?
Geoff, what do you think is causing contamination in your batches? Temperature? Not sanitizing absolutely everything?
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To keep the temperature warm enough I've been keeping the little Mr. Beer Keg fermenter in my laundry/furnace room as it stays around 70 in there. I think the crappy airlock on that system is just letting something in, there's a lot of moving air in there and that's where my dogs eat too. On the plus side, I bottled the Marzen last night and it appears to be good, tastes like flat beer with no hints of the cidery taste I got on the last batch. I was going to start another last night, but got lazy. Maybe tonight.
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My Mr. Beer has been fermenting for about a week and a half now. I am a bit concerned because I don't see a lot of bubbles and definetely do not have much of a krausen to speak of. I can't see the bottom of the container because I am keeping it in a cooler.
FWIW I am brewing the one that came with the kit(West Coast PA I think) and used the booster pack 
so I am not expecting a lot, but I just don't see anything. Should I be concerned? Can/should I open the top to look in?
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colb218 wrote:
My Mr. Beer has been fermenting for about a week and a half now. I am a bit concerned because I don't see a lot of bubbles and definetely do not have much of a krausen to speak of. I can't see the bottom of the container because I am keeping it in a cooler.
FWIW I am brewing the one that came with the kit(West Coast PA I think) and used the booster pack
Don't open it. By now most of the fermentation should be done, I never saw many visible bubbles or krausen so don't fret. What temperature are you fermenting at? I've already downed 6 liters of my West Coast Pale and it's meh at best, but has gotten better with age. I fermented for 2 weeks, carbonated for 2 weeks, and the bottle I had last night was cold conditioned (refrigerated) for 2 weeks and it was the best yet. Still pretty boring, but it is what it is. With the dumbed down "airlock" system they use and the annoyingly opaque fermenter, it's hard to accurately track progress, so I'd just keep trucking along per the instructions.
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I am most likely fermenting at a colder temp then recommened. We had a late cold snap here and I don't usually keep my heater on, hence why it is in the cooler. It smells like beer when I open the lid of the cooler, so I am hoping things are ok. I am planning on bottling next Monday which will put it at 17 days fermenting. Will let it sit for a week and then try one and then let the rest sit for another week.
I am not expecting greatness with this batch, but wanted to get my feet wet. Will probably be stopping by my LHBS thiss weekened to pick up some more ingredients. Thanks for the re-assurance 
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Ugh, I hate sounding helpless but...
I just went to my LHBS with the intention of picking up ingredients to make my next batch. Unfortunately I was planning on relying on some of their knowledge in addition to my reading to pick out what I needed. Well as it turns out my LHBS has zero knowledge of Mr. Beer so their only suggestion was to pick up a HME and use the whole can as opposed to following the instructions and using the UME/Sugar.
Sooooo... what I know have in my possession is can of Muntions Hopped Amber Extract(3.3lbs) and a packet of Nottingham yeast. I figure this isn't the worse thing in the world(wouldn't a normal 5 gal. batch be 1 can HME and 1 can UME?), but I also want to do a bit of experimenting. My plan is to use the whole can of HME and maybe add like a cup of Honey. Does this sound feasible? I suppose I could go pick up some blueberries or something, but I don't like 'fruity' beers.
Will continue reading, but would love some thoughts!
Also: I picked up some nifty tablets for bottling. If I am reading correctly, I will just drop two in for the liter PET bottles I have. Will report on these in a week or so.
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I would like to start brewing beer but I don't have the space for it in my current house. Right now, all I make is wine. Here are some pics!
This is some peach wine that I started on in December. I bottled it a couple of weeks ago and put some back to age for a year. This stuff will be good when it's aged. It's pretty good now but you can still taste a little bit of bitterness in it. You can definitely tell that it's peach though!
Here it is bottled. It cleared off real nice!
Here is some pomegranate that I made last year. This stuff aged great. My wife was pregnant and couldn't drink so I didn't drink much around her. After she had the baby, we popped open a bottle of it with dinner one night. I could not believe what a year would do to it. You cannot taste the alcohol in it whatsoever!
I have only been making wine for about a two years. My father in law got me into it. He has been making nwine for 30+ years. He used to make beer but got out of it. He has a lot of friends that do it though so he trades them wine for beer. They make some good brews!
Last edited by Saabaru0001 (2011-03-07 09:24:45)
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I looked into wine making too, but I much prefer aging a few weeks over a year, that's a long ass time to wait for the fruits of your labor.
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hyperboarder wrote:
I much prefer aging a few weeks over a year, that's a long ass time to waste if you mess something up in the process.
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You don't HAVE to age it that long. I have some that I put off to the side to drink right away. It's good either way but aging it is a lot better.
If I get 30 bottles of wine out of 6 gallons (all depends on the size/type of bottles you are using.) I usually put 15 off to the side for aging. I also usually make two different wines at once so I have two different wines to drink. I will be starting some blueberry within the next week or so.
I mostly make them from ingredient kits because it's fool proof but I have made it from scratch in the past. It's pretty easy to do either way. I haven't messed anything up yet and I'm still considered a rookie. 
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I got bored last night and decided to keep knocking off my Mr. Beer recipes so I can justify getting the rest of the stuff to start 5 gallon batches. Pureed a can of peaches and dumped them in with the blonde ale. We'll see what happens.
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That sounds like it's going to be pretty good!
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Bottled the Irish Car Bomb stout last night. It tasted amazing.
Granted, it was flat, but after two weeks of sitting in secondary fermentation, the flavors had enough time to melt together. It came out exactly how I hoped. While you're tasting, the first thing that hits you is the Guinness, second you get a faint hint of Jameson, and then there's a vanilla aftertaste. No chocolate taste like you get from a car bomb, but it's got a month in the bottles before it's time to enjoy it. Hopefully the flavors will evolve a little more.
EDIT: @Saabarupp, we came up with 4 of those 25.6 oz. bottles to put this one in. Final stats were 4 Euro bottles, 12 22 oz. bottles, and 12 12 oz. bottles. I still probably had a 12 oz. bottle's worth of beer left in the bucket when finished, but I only sanitized that many bottles... Sacrificed that much sadly.
Last edited by SilentlyAmazing (2011-03-21 10:19:09)
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I'm jealous, I really want to try that. Mr. Beer sucks, I'm 3 recipes from done and graduating to real beer. On a positive note, I helped cellar some beer last night at a local brewery and I'm doing my damndest to get involved on a few levels there. Might just skip the home brewing and go straight to micro 
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hyperboarder wrote:
I'm jealous, I really want to try that. Mr. Beer sucks, I'm 3 recipes from done and graduating to real beer. On a positive note, I helped cellar some beer last night at a local brewery and I'm doing my damndest to get involved on a few levels there. Might just skip the home brewing and go straight to micro
Ready to drop everything and fly to CO if that happens...
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SilentlyAmazing wrote:
hyperboarder wrote:
I'm jealous, I really want to try that. Mr. Beer sucks, I'm 3 recipes from done and graduating to real beer. On a positive note, I helped cellar some beer last night at a local brewery and I'm doing my damndest to get involved on a few levels there. Might just skip the home brewing and go straight to micro
Ready to drop everything and fly to CO if that happens...
Lol, it's slowly coming together. The brewery already has 6 or 7 accounts locally with another few coming on in the next few weeks, they're currently borrowing space at another brewery but their full system should be getting installed tomorrow. I'm stopping by the brewery Thursday to see the progress. I really like the brewer/founder and have talked to him about helping with brewing and in the tap room, so I'm pretty hopeful that it works out.
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Bottled the peach blonde tonight. A quick sip off the tap makes me think it's going to be decent. On the other side of the coin I'm drinking a bottle of my 2nd batch that I apparently over primed. It's like beer flavored alka seltzer. I'm so done with stupid Mr. Beer.
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Sorry to hear that
I like my Mr. Beer so far. My WCPA isn't great but not terrible. Its a little yeasty at first but opens up after a bit. Bottled my second batch today, was tasty out of the My. Beer if a little sweet(3.3lbs Hopped Amber Extract + Honey and used Notty's). Used my capper for the first time today 
Doubt i can do much more than extract batches, but its fun to experiment all the same.
Also I used bottling drops and it came out great in the liter bottles(2 drops per)
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I keep bouncing back and forth between this and the other beer thread, but as it's pseudo home-brewing related, I'll throw it up here. I'm getting more involved with the set up and whatnot at Pateros Creek, went through their keg stock last night to check for bad gaskets and I'll probably go back tonight to help clean up the dirty brewing platform that came with their system. Trying to work my way into a fun moonlighting job. They got the system from WI, it's in decent shape with the exception of having sat for a while, so it needs a lot of new gaskets, the hot liquor tank needs a new heating element, and some of the plumbing needs replacing.
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Cool! That should be fun to be involved with. I think when i get back to the states i'm going to try this out...
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I'm cracking open a carbomb stout tonight for the first time. It was recommended to let it carb in bottles for 3 weeks, and that was up yesterday. I tossed one in the fridge last night, so we'll see what the outcome was in a few hours time...
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I'm pretty excited to hear how that ended up, ambitious experiment.
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